New @roapejournal.bsky.social journal issue out, great stuff including an interview & reflections with the magnificent Issa Shivji bsky.app/profile/roap...

Shaun Milton reviews Saima Ndahangwapo’s new book Defending the Investment about uranium mining in Namibia, arguing it makes a valuable contribution to our understanding of the history of decolonisation in Africa. roape.net/2025/11/05/d...

As part of @guerrilla_pod's African revolutions & decolonisation series, Henry Hakamäki spoke w. Josaphat Musamba, Prof Germain Tshibambe & myself about mining in Congo. History, environmental & economic impacts, nuances etc. 2 1/2 hours! guerrillahistory.libsyn.com/mining-the-c...

Guerrilla History: Mining the Congo w/ Josaphat Musamba, Germain Ngoie Tshibambe, & Ben Radley (AR&D Ep.10) Episode webpage: guerrillahistory.libsyn.com/mining-the-c... Media file: traffic.libsyn.com/secure/guerr...

Sacolo Bafanabakhe outlines the historical processes of political, economic & social failure in #Eswatini that have led the Communist Party of #Swaziland to declare 2025 the Year of Mass Mobilisation for the Insurrectionary Seizure of Power. roape.net/2025/10/17/s...

Check out our new walking tour app that celebrates Black histories in Bath, from the Roman Empire to the present day. The app has been developed by Bath academics at CDS with BEMSCA. Learn more about the walk: www.devstud.org.uk/2025/06/13/b... @devcomms.bsky.social @radleyben.bsky.social

Drawing upon 41 interviews and 200 hours of observant participation, Siyabulela Fobosi delivers a scathing criticism of South Africa’s Taxi Recapitalisation Programme, arguing that it deepens precarity and workers’ resistance.

Or, to put it another way, DR #Congo - which provides around 3/4s of world cobalt supply - receives less than 0.6% of the value generated in the global electric vehicle value chain (much of which disappears overseas anyhow). Source: ecfr.eu/publication/...

Longstanding ROAPE editor Colin Stoneman recalls his impressions of #Zimbabwe under colonial occupation, the country’s liberation struggle and its leading unionist & political figures, including Morgan Tsvangiri. roape.net/2025/09/03/c...

Excellent to see this out after a bit of work steering it through. Learnt a huge amount in the process about a context I knew little of before. Includes a slightly different but wonderful article on artistic engagement in resistance through poetry & song bsky.app/profile/roap...

The editorial from the latest issue of ROAPE journal, including links to freely access all the listed articles: Caught in the fishers’ net? The colonial plunder of Western Sahara’s natural resources, by Blanca Camps-Febrer & Enrique Bengochea Tirado roape.net/2025/07/30/c...

Have written about this elsewhere but this idea that 'large-scale & small-scale mining operations can partner & flourish together' assumes small-scale happy to stay small. Risks cementing subordination of small (local/national) to large (typically foreign). www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

The brilliant Farwa Sial on the growing role of private equity in the global South, writing for the Developing Economics blog: developingeconomics.org/2025/07/23/p...

Keep an eye out for @roapejournal.bsky.social's upcoming Fanon special issue, due out in December 2025... bsky.app/profile/roap...

100 years ago today, Frantz Fanon was born. Martiniquais by birth, Algerian by struggle #Fanon100 was not only a seminal thinker of anti-imperialist struggles in Africa and the Global South, but also a revolutionary activist. "What matters is not to know the world but to change it"

A new working paper with @CynthKamwengo that hopefully provides some practical examples & ideas for how universities can decolonise, diversify, & update their social science curricula (& possible limits to these efforts): purehost.bath.ac.uk/ws/portalfil...

Dr Cynthia Kamwengo, Research Fellow @newnhamcollege.bsky.social and @radleyben.bsky.social have a new paper in Multiversum. Deconstructing and reconstructing African development studies through student engagement and cross-cultural collaboration at a UK university: www.bath.ac.uk/corporate-in...

Today is the day. After weeks of the various distractions & disturbances that make up academic life, & the worry over a paper that's not moving forward, I have an entire day to write. And here I am, procrastinating, unable to write. Brilliant. Thanks brain.

Staff or student at @uniofbath.bsky.social ? Coming to @devcomms.bsky.social‬ conference at #Bath this week? Download this new (& free!) walking tour app on Android & Apple that celebrates Black histories in the city, from the Roman Empire to the present day. www.devstud.org.uk/2025/06/13/b...

To learn about the history of the conflict, check out @radleyben.bsky.social‬ + Nicholas Fairwood’s @newleftreview.bsky.social‬ essay: newleftreview.org/sidecar/post....

💭 “To develop a deeper understanding of the unfolding tragedy [in the DRC], it is essential to acknowledge the enduring role of imperialism in producing such a vitiated Congolese state”—‬Nicholas Fairwood + @radleyben.bsky.social in a recent @newleftreview.bsky.social‬ blog.

Fantastic overview of the spread and scale of industrial activity in pre-colonial Africa, including textiles, shipbuilding, construction and glassworking. By Isaac Samuel. www.africanhistoryextra.com/p/historic-i...

Not everyday a yet-to-be-presented paper at @hetecon.bsky.social‬ conference makes @theguardian.com lead editorial ""Zambia’s economy is not being plundered by domestic actors but rather by transnational corporate practices" Happy to have my ticket to this one www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

📑 Read the full @newleftreview.bsky.social‬ blog: newleftreview.org/sidecar/post.... ➕ For a more expansive view, check out #NYUCIC’s Senior Fellow @jasonkstearns.bsky.social‬’s recent essay: newleftreview.org/sidecar/post.... #NYUCIC’s#NYUCICNYUCIC #DRC

🤔 How has the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s position within the imperial order shaped its current conflict? 🔍 @radleyben.bsky.social‬ + Nicholas Fairwood analyze the conflict and the history of imperial intervention and interference in the country.

In this short excerpt from the conclusion to his recently published book - Military #Marxism: Africa’s Contribution to Revolutionary Theory, 1957-2023 - Adam Mayer urges the importance of returning to and learning from #Africa’s Military Marxists. roape.net/2025/06/04/t...

Thanks to Artur Colom for this generous review of Disrupted Development in the Congo. "an important read for scholars of African political economy, policymakers and anyone interested in the intersections of mining, development and global capitalism". doi.org/10.1080/0225...

Well this is a conference next week I'd like to be at - 70 Years After Bandung: Challenges and Struggles on the Road to Self-Determination and South-South Solidarity - plus at the bottom an excellent looking list of authors and blogs on the topic. www.networkideas.org/announcement...

Excited to join the radical Pan-African publishing collective Editor House Facility (EHF), which produces political, cultural & academic books by Africans, for the continent. Discover more about EHF and the services we offer here: editorhousefacility.com/editorial-se...

A useful short history behind the Co-ops recent vote to boycott Israeli products www.counterfire.org/article/co-o...

In case anyone needs to read the Spanish version of our @newleftreview.bsky.social‬ Sidecar piece on how colonial legacies & imperialism have shaped the ongoing war in Congo, here it is on @diario.red (& English version ICYMI) www.diario-red.com/articulo/arm... newleftreview.org/sidecar/post...

'The DRC – born under Belgian colonial rule, remade as a Cold War theatre, now shaped by external financial flows – remains deprived of anything resembling real sovereignty.' Ben Radley & Nicholas Fairwood contextualise the conflict in the Congo: newleftreview.org/sidecar/post...

New piece for @newleftreview.bsky.social in which we argue the 'weakness' of the Congolese state - often cited as an explanatory factor for ongoing war in the east - is intimately intwined with the long history of imperial intervention in the country. newleftreview.org/sidecar/post... 🇨🇩

DRC and Zambia are seeking to develop an integrated supply chain for electric vehicle batteries. In this short podcast, Patience Mususa and I discuss the origins of this project, why it's significant, and where it might be headed. soundcloud.com/aegt-ca/aegt...

New special issue edited by Pritish Behuria & Andy Sumner entering into the debates around the state of development studies today and where it should be headed in the future, with an open access introduction here link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Lots to like in this paper. One thing that caught my eye is the graph on Zambia's copper production and copper prices. Zambia's falling copper production is usually blamed on nationalisation but the graph shows the nationalised industry was also responding the falling prices.

🚨New Issue Alert! Volume 52 Issue 183 of ROAPE is now out, edited by Elisa Greco. Open access links to all contributions are in this thread. EDITORIAL Africa and permanent (global) wars Elisa Greco & @RadleyBen , 1-14 scienceopen.com/hosted-docum...

This new paper by Grieve Chelwa, Ntazana Kaulule & Paolo de Renzio on Zambia's permanent debt crisis offers a very clear & compelling case study into how external forces can be decisive in shaping the trajectory African economies, over & above internal dynamics. link.springer.com/article/10.1...

"Class Struggles is arguably the most significant and rigorous Marxist critique of Nyerere’s Tanzania." A brilliant review of Issa Shivji's 1975 book by Leo Zeilig for Liberated Texts. liberatedtexts.com/reviews/the-...

ICYMI, two podcast conversations here with Prof Georges Nzongola-Ntalaja, first on the history of the Congo from Leopold on, the second historicising the current moment in the east. Both well worth a listen! guerrillahistory.libsyn.com/the-congo-fr... guerrillahistory.libsyn.com/the-situatio...